


Missing Time

by AdAbolendam



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angsty Fluff with a Sad Ending, Canon Compliant Pairings, Exposition, F/M, Grief, Post Season 5, Reunion, Romance, So... pretty much like the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdAbolendam/pseuds/AdAbolendam
Summary: How do you tell someone that they have missed some of the best and worst days of their life? How do you tell them what they have gained and who they have lost?





	Missing Time

Jemma Simmons waited on the bed in the darkened hotel room, listening to the pipes squeak and shudder as Fitz turned the water off.  
  
For the fourth time in as many minutes, she picked up her phone with her finger poised over the “call” button, before turning it back over. As much as she wanted to tell the others that they were back safely, Fitz needed time to adjust. Depending on how well he took the news of all that he had missed out on in the last six months (give or take 80 years), that might be a very long amount of time indeed.  
  
When the door to the bathroom squeaked open behind her, she gritted her teeth and turned around. Her tense smile lost its artifice when she saw him standing there.  
  
He looked a little dazed, but he was healthy and so very much alive.  
  
Whatever came next, whatever she would have to do to make him understand, it would be well worth it to have her second half alive and beside her again.  
  
“Hello,” she said softly.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Fitz sat down gingerly on the bed and she leaned against his bare shoulder. His skin was still damp and tacky from the shower. She ran a hand down the leg of his sweatpants and he took her hand in his.  
  
“So…”  
  
“So,” she repeated.  
  
“So,” he said, shifting to face her. “You were saying something about how I saved the world?”  
  
She smiled at him.  
  
“You did, Fitz,” she said. “I suppose we all had our roles to play. But you were the one who rescued us from the future. You helped get us back.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing a tired face with his hand. “And then I died.”  
  
Jemma swallowed and nodded.  
  
“You did,” she agreed. “You died saving Polly and Robin.”  
  
Fitz smiled faintly.  
  
“Well, I guess if I was going to go out, there were worse ways I could have done it.”  
  
She could not reply to that.  
  
Not enough time had passed. She had still not had enough of a chance to process everything. Even a lifetime might not be enough to truly understand what it was like to grieve a man that she had married, fought beside, and risked her life for, only to have him sitting in front of her knowing that he was and was not the same person.  
  
If circumstances had been different, she might have asked May how she coped with it after Coulson had died the first time. Now though…  
  
“Were you there?” Fitz asked. “When I—I mean, did you see it?”  
  
“No,” she said softly. “Mack was with you. So was May. They were… well, let’s just say that they will be very glad to see you again.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Jemma.”  
  
“What?” She asked. “No! Don’t be sorry. You did the impossible, Fitz! You _changed time._ Something you did not even believe could be done.”  
  
“Still,” he said, grabbing her other hand in his. “Even if I knew there was a spare you floating around in space somewhere, I can’t imagine what I would have done… if… the situa—  
  
Jemma recoiled a few inches as she realized what had distracted him. His right hand closed over her left. Between his index finger and thumb, he held the ring that she had not removed since he had placed it on her finger on their wedding day.  
  
“Jemma,” he breathed.  
  
His eyes darted between her face and the damning evidence on her hand.  
  
“Is this…? Did we…?”  
  
She nodded, unable to bring a voice to the “yes” that formed on her lips.  
  
Fitz covered his open mouth with both hands. He jumped to his feet and began to pace in front of her.  
  
“I missed our wedding. I missed… we got married… and I was frozen on the other side of the bloody solar system,” he muttered from behind his fingers.  
  
“I know,” was all she could say. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s all so strange right now. But Fitz, you have to know that even though you don’t have a memory of it, it was you. Everything other you did, it’s what you would have done.”  
  
“But I didn’t get to do it!”  
  
She wanted to tell him that it did not matter, that they could do it again and it would be alright.  
  
But she did not want to lie to him.  
  
They could have another ceremony. They could invite their families this time. She could wear a dress that wasn’t second-hand and safety-pinned together. They could exchange rings that they picked out themselves.  
  
She would do it again for him.  
  
But it would not be alright.  
  
Their vows would be scripted and unspontaneous. It would not be in a field created by an impossible rip in another dimension. Their rings would not be chosen by the stranger that turned out to be their grandson. And the officiant, whoever they might be, would never care about their continued happiness the way that Coulson did.  
  
It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  
  
And he had missed it.  
  
But maybe there was a way she could help him understand.  
  
“You proposed to me when I was enslaved on the Lighthouse, eighty years from now,” she began.  
  
Fitz slowed his pacing to listen.  
  
“We could not acknowledge that we even knew each other,” she said. “I was facing away from you and while you talked to my back. I was so relieved that you were there. I don’t know how I managed to keep a straight face.”  
  
“What did I say?” He whispered.  
  
She chuckled sadly.  
  
“I don’t know! Kasius—the Kree keeping me imprisoned, he stopped my ears with some device that only let me hear him,” she explained. “I still don’t know what you said.”  
  
Fitz grinned faintly.  
  
“What would you have said, Fitz?”  
  
His brow furrowed as he sat on the extra bed across from her. Moments passed in silence as he tried to find the right words.  
  
“I would say how glad I was to see you,” he said, speaking to the carpet. “I would tell you that I had spent six months in a black ops military site and planned to spend the next eighty years frozen in space just to see you.”  
  
He looked up to find her grinning encouragingly.  
  
“Go on,” she said.  
  
“I would have told you that after all we have been through, I’ve realized that the universe can’t stop us,” he said. “We’ve crossed galaxies. We’ve traveled through time. We’ve survived the bottom of the Atlantic just so we could be together. A love like that is stronger than any curse. We are unstoppable together.”  
  
“I would have told you that I do not want to live another day without you…”  
  
Tears ran down Jemma’s cheeks and she tasted salt through the cracks in her smile.  
  
“Then what?” She asked.  
  
“I would have asked you to marry me,” he said. “So that I would never leave your side again.”  
  
She sniffed and swiped at the tears with her sleeve.  
  
“And if I had heard you. I would have said ‘yes.’”  
  
Fitz sank to his knees on the floor between them and pulled her head down to meet his lips. Jemma cradled his face with her hands and kissed him with everything that she had. This was her Fitz. He tasted like home. She could have stayed like that for hours if he let her.  
  
But his curiosity interrupted them.  
  
He broke away and brushed her cheek with her thumb.  
  
“But you didn’t hear me,” he reminded her. “So, what happened next?”  
  
Jemma sat back, grinning fondly.  
  
“You took a shot at the Kree who had enslaved me, grabbed me, and we jumped from a balcony,” she proclaimed.  
  
“What?!”  
  
“Yes!” She insisted. “As soon as we were on the other side, I asked you to marry me. Just like that.”  
  
“And what did I say?”  
  
“‘Absolutely,’” she quoted, beaming so brightly she though her face would crack.  
  
Fitz let out a short bark of laughter.  
  
“ _That_ is a story to tell the grandkids,” he decided. “Wait… what?”  
  
“Nothing,” Jemma said quickly, banishing the image of the last time she saw Deke.  
  
“Did something bad happen as well?”  
  
_Oh, Fitz._  
  
So much bad had happened. She did not know where to begin.  
  
Before she left, she and Daisy decided that they would not discuss the madness that had driven Fitz to torture and maim her.  
  
_“This Fitz didn’t do that to me,”_ Daisy said. _“There’s no point in making him feel guilty for something that he didn’t do.”_  
  
Jemma had almost fallen against her in gratitude. She suspected that Fitz’s death had a heavy impact on her feelings on the subject, but she still had every right to be angry.  
  
“Six months have happened, Fitz,” she replied at last. “A lot can change in that time. A lot did change. We fought robots and aliens. We traveled through time twice. We closed a rift in another dimension. We stopped the world from cracking apart.”  
  
Fitz eyes grew wider and wider with every word. When she was done, he let out a long breath and seemed to collapse with it.  
  
“But we were together?” He asked.  
  
“Every step of the way.”  
  
“And everyone’s okay? Other than me, obviously.”  
  
Jemma stared at him for so long, she stopped seeing him. Images and sounds filled her head, memories she was able to forget while she was looking for him. They all came back now, all the more painful for having been neglected for so long.  
  
An MRI revealing an impossible wound. Hidden tears and accusatory glances. Guilt and pain that persisted for days as she hovered between deciding which version of the future would destroy her the least.  
  
_“It’s not good news… Your heart will just stop beating… We both know what happens when we don’t let nature take its course… I’m just sad I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to Fitz…”_  
  
“…emma? Jemma? What happened?”  
  
“Yo-Yo lost her arms,” she replied tonelessly.  
  
It was a sad commentary on their present state that that news was the easiest to deliver.  
  
“Both of them?” He exclaimed. “How?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s done. We gave her new ones. She hates them. But she’s coping.”  
  
Even in her dissociated state, she realized that he knew that she was not telling him everything.  
  
“But Daisy’s okay?” He asked. “Mack? May?”  
  
Jemma nodded and finally met his eyes.  
  
“No,” Fitz said. “No… nonono…”  
  
He rocked back on his heels and fell against the metal frame of the bed.  
  
“Coulson,” he said.  
  
“We lost him, Fitz,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
She reached her hand toward him and he sprang to his feet when her skin grazed his.  
  
“No,” he said. “He was fine! He was with you all! He’s strong. He knows how to fight! May would have… she would never let anything happen to him!”  
  
“She tried,” Jemma answered. “We all did. There was no way--”  
  
“There’s always a way!” He yelled. “That’s what he told us! There’s always a solution! What happened? What did we do wrong?”  
  
She gripped her hands with her knees, refusing to rise to the bait. This was not The Doctor talking, after all. This was grief.  
  
“Nothing,” she said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, Fitz. He was dying. We had a cure. It took forever for us to get, but we found it. The centipede serum.”  
  
“From the Deathlok program?” He asked incredulously.  
  
She nodded.  
  
“He didn’t take it. He gave it to Daisy instead. It gave her the power to stop the world from cracking apart. He gave up his chance so he could save us all.”  
  
Fitz slumped onto the bed with a moan.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he muttered from behind his hands. “He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him.”  
  
“There was,” she said. “Even before we were taken, he wasn’t fine. It was the Ghost Rider. He made a deal. He was given the Rider’s powers, but in exchange… the GH-325 cure stopped working. He died from the wound that tore his heart in half five years ago.”  
  
Her eyes flooded over.  
  
It was the first time she had said it out loud.  
  
He was really gone.  
  
They had spent so long trying to prevent the inevitable that she had started to believe it would not really happen. Even Coulson’s “retirement party” seemed to carry the hope of a future reunion. As they flew off in the Zephyr, Jemma found it hard to imagine anything as dark as death could touch him in a tropical paradise with May by his side.  
  
But as soon as she and Fitz returned, she received the voicemail that had been left on her phone a week prior.  
  
_“Jemma, it’s May. I know it may be a while before you get this, but… he’s gone. He went in his sleep this afternoon. I…I’m coming back. I just need some time. I’ll see you soon. Tell Fitz… tell him I’m glad he’s okay.”_  
  
“It’s my fault.”  
  
Jemma turned back to him sharply.  
  
“What?”  
  
“He died because of me,” Fitz whispered.  
  
“No! What are you talking about?”  
  
“He took that deal to kill AIDA,” he spat. “Coulson’s dead because I helped Radcliffe design that monster!”  
  
“Fitz—  
  
“I killed him,” he muttered, doubling over in pain. “I killed him. I killed him. Ikilledhimikilledhim.”  
  
Jemma sank to the floor beside him, pulling him against her.  
  
“Fitz, that’s not true,” she said.  
  
“It is. It is,” he moaned. “Oh God! May… Daisy… they’re never going to forgive me.”  
  
“Fitz, stop!” She begged.  
  
Jemma took his chin in her hands and made him look at her.  
  
“This is so much more complicated than one person,” she stated. “This was Loki and AIDA and the Ghost Rider and alien-bloody-technology! It was Coulson being too damn stubborn and noble to save himself even though we wanted him to. Nobody blames you. Nobody.”  
  
“Maybe they should.”  
  
“No,” she said firmly. “They shouldn’t. In the diner, before we were taken, you told me what Coulson said to you when you got out of the Framework?”  
  
“Fitz?” She prodded. “What did he say?”  
  
Fitz grimaced, turning away from her.  
  
“What did he say to you?”  
  
“‘It’s not your fault,’” he whispered.  
  
“It’s not, Fitz. It’s not your fault.”  
  
His face broke and he fell into her lap. Heaving sobs shook his entire body.  
  
She wished she could break down and cry with him, but she had had more than enough chances over the last few months. This was still new to him. In the end, all she could do was hold him.  
  
She could not tell him it was okay.  
  
It wasn’t.  
  
The person who had been their leader, friend, protector, and father was gone. There was a hole inside of her that continued to throb and ache. Time would scar it over, but it would never disappear. It was a pain that they would all carry with them like a phantom limb, twinging because of the absence of something that was once a part of them.  
  
“He’s just gone,” Fitz whispered. “The last time I saw him, we were in that diner and he just disappeared.”  
  
Jemma winced and nodded.  
  
“I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, Jemma,” he said. “I’ll never see him again and I couldn’t even say goodbye.”  
  
Her heart broke. She had no reserves of strength to sustain her. Everything she had was spent on getting Fitz home safe. She was tired of being strong.  
  
Jemma rested her forehead on Fitz’s shoulder and wept.


End file.
